Feminitives in media: a vocabulary project

Abstract

Alexandr V. Kobyakov – aspirant, Yaroslav-the-Wise Novgorod State University, Russia.

ORCID: 0000-0002-2118-5070

Received: 23/05/2021. Accepted for publication: 06/08/2021.

The article discusses the possibility of generalizing the practice of using feminitives as a lexical group in the language of the media by forming a dictionary. The author summarizes the experience of researching feminine nouns similar to masculine nominations in profession and occupation, characterizes existing dictionaries and online generators of feminitives. The main directions of studying this group of words are evaluated. The narrowness of the view of feminitives presented in existing works and the possibility of a more objective analysis of the phenomenon with a broader approach to the analyzed lexical group is noted. The ways of forming words of this lexical group, as well as other aspects of the existence of feminitives in the language of the media, are described. The main characteristic features and shortcomings of the accumulated experience of systematization of feminine correlates of masculine nouns are determined. The authors note the inconsistency of openly available online dictionaries and generators from the point of view of the female correlates proposed for the same masculine nouns and their inconsistency with the real speech practice of Russian-language media. The author substantiates the need to form a dictionary, states that there are no attempts to fully and comprehensively generalize the processes of the existence of feminitives in mass media texts. The scheme of constructing a dictionary entry and the main characteristics that it will contain are described, as well as examples of the content of a dictionary entry about specific feminitives found in Russian-language media are given. The article provides a methodology for forming a dictionary, methods for analyzing the identified lexemes and stages of work on the study. The conclusion is made about the practical effect of forming a dictionary in terms of continuing research in this area and the work of practicing journalists.